CVK

Last week’s New York magazine had an interesting article about how gentrification is affecting one single block in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood long known as one of the most dangerous slums in Brooklyn, but now being prized for its supply of well-maintained brownstones and proximity to Manhattan.

The article points out that many of the neighborhood’s new residents are interracial couples, and that therefore Bed Stuy’s gentrification process is not the typical pushing out of blacks by whites:

Gentrification is a loaded term with fault lines traversing race and class at oblique angles. The shorthand formula for this phenomenon—of wealthy white intruders displacing less-privileged black residents—fails to convey the complex reality on the ground in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The newcomers here are not so monolithic, the old-timers not so easily pushed aside.

But aren’t interracial couples just a typical part of the gentrification process? In my experience, this is the usual progression of gentrification: “artsy” hipster kids –> interracial couples –> gay/lesbian couples –> young professionals of color –> white young professionals –> white couples with young children –> affluent (and white) couples and families. Certainly, that’s what I’ve seen over the past 5 years in my own Brooklyn neighborhood.